List of unsolved deaths

• The cause of death could not be officially determined following an investigation
• The person's identity could not be established after they were found dead
• The cause is known, but the manner of death could not be determined following an investigation
• Different official investigations have come to different conclusions

Unsolved murders

Unsolved deaths

Ancient

• The Younger Lady is the informal name given to the mummy of a woman who lived during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, and was discovered in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings in tomb KV35 by archaeologist Victor Loret in 1898. The cause of her death is unknown. Through recent DNA tests, this mummy has been identified as the mother of the pharaoh Tutankhamun and a daughter of pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. Early speculation that these were the remains of Queen Nefertiti has been disproven.
• Tutankhamun, male Egyptian pharaoh, is believed to have died around 1323 BC, though his cause of death remains unknown, with one theory being that he was fatally injured in a chariot crash.
• Zoroaster was an ancient male Iranian prophet who lived during 1000 BCE and who was said to perform miracles; he founded the religion now known as Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster's cause of death is unknown; it is said that Zoroaster was killed by invading Turanians around the time that he was last seen, but this was never confirmed.
• The Hasanlu Lovers are the remains of two humans found in Teppe Hasanlu, Iran, in 1972 who are thought to have died. While it has been suggested that they died from asphyxiation, no definitive cause of death has been established.
• The Borremose bodies are three bog bodies that were found in 1946 and 1948 in Himmerland, Denmark, in the Borremose peat bog. They have been dated to have lived in the Nordic Bronze Age during 770 BCE. The causes of their deaths are unknown.
• The Saltmen are the remains of six men who lived during the remainder of the Achaemenid dynasty that were found in 2010 in the salt mines in Chehrabad on the southern part of the Hamzehlu village in the Zanjan Province in Iran. Though it is known that most of them were accidentally killed by the collapse of galleries where they worked, the causes of the deaths of the other saltmen remain unknown.
• Alexander the Great died in 323 BCE after a short illness. Exactly what the illness was is a subject of debate; however, it is known that he was a heavy drinker throughout his life.
• Orgetorix, who died in 61 BCE, was a wealthy aristocrat among the Helvetii, a Celtic-speaking people residing in what is now Switzerland during the consulship of Julius Caesar of the Roman Republic. He was put on trial for conspiring to seize control of Gaul. His cause of death beyond this is disputed.
• Cleopatra, the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, is believed to have died in August of 30 BCE in Alexandria. According to popular belief, Cleopatra killed herself by allowing an asp to bite her. According to Greek and Roman historians, Cleopatra poisoned herself using either a toxic ointment or sharp implement such as a hairpin. Primary source accounts are derived mainly from the works of the ancient Roman historians Strabo, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio. Modern scholars debate the validity of ancient reports involving snakebites as the cause of death and whether she was murdered. Some academics hypothesize that her Roman political rival Octavian forced her to commit suicide in the manner of her choosing. The location of Cleopatra's tomb is unknown.
• Judas Iscariot, a disciple and one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus; the circumstances of his death in AD 31 vary widely depending on the source, though many state that Judas died by suicide, specifically hanging himself.
• The Weerdinge Men were two bog bodies found naked in the southern part of Bourtanger Moor in Drenthe in the Netherlands in 1904. Though one of the men is known to have been murdered, the cause of the other man's death is unknown. They died between 160 BCE and 220 CE.
• Windeby I is the name given to the bog body in 1952 that was preserved in a peat bog close to Windeby located in Northern Germany containing the remains of a teenage male who lived between 41 BCE and 118 CE. His death cause is disputed and unknown.

  Medieval

• Princess Yongtai, 701. In both the Old Book of Tang and New Book of Tang, it is recorded that she was executed by Empress Wu Zetian with her brother and husband because of spreading rumors about the two officials Zhang Yizhi and Zhang Changzong, who were also the lovers of Empress Wu Zetian. However, from her epitaph, it was said she was pregnant when she died. From a piece of her pelvic bone, it has been presumed that she died from childbirth, because her pelvis seems to be smaller than other women at the same age. It is also suspected that she went into shock on hearing the news that her brother and husband had been executed, and it caused a fatal miscarriage.
• Emperor Taizu of Song, the first emperor of Song dynasty, died in 976. There are no records about how he died. However, his younger brother was granted the throne due to the fact that he had two grown sons. There is a folk story "shadows by the candle and sounds from an axe" possibly indicating that he was murdered by his brother, but it may also have been a suicide.
• Roopkund is a high-altitude glacial lake in the Uttarakhand state of India. It lies in the lap of Trishul massif, located in the Himalayas. It is widely known for the hundreds of ancient human skeletons found at the edge of the lake. The human skeletal remains are visible at its bottom when the snow melts. Research generally points to a semi-legendary event where a group of people were killed in a sudden, violent hailstorm in the 9th century. Studies placed the time of mass death around the 9th century CE and second group of skeletons were dated to the 19th century CE. The skeletons' identities are unknown, but radiocarbon dating suggests that the older remains were deposited over an extended period of time, while the remains of the younger group were deposited during a single event.
• King William II of England, 1100, was killed by an arrow while hunting; it may or may not have been an accident.
• Agnès Sorel, 1450, was Charles VII of France's chief royal mistress, having four daughters with him. Sorel fell ill while pregnant with their 4th daughter, and after giving birth, died on 9 February 1450 from causes which are disputed.

  Early modern

• The Lovers of Cluj-Napoca, a nickname given to two skeletons found in a former Dominican convent in Cluj-Napoca, Romania in 2013, are thought to have lived between 1450 and 1550. Their exact causes of death are unclear.
• Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter, a Lancastrian, died after mysteriously falling overboard and drowning while sailing through the English Channel in September 1475. Though there are different theories to what happened, none were ever proved to be true.
• Regiomontanus, whose real name was "Johannes Müller von Königsberg", was an astrologer, mathematician, and astronomer of the German Renaissance who was active in countries in Europe. He was thought to have died from the plague on 6 July 1476, but this is not known for sure.
• Princes in the Tower, used to refer to Edward V, King of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York who disappeared in the summer of 1483. In 1674, workmen at the Tower of London dug up a wooden box containing two small human skeletons. The bones were found in a box under the staircase in the Tower. The bones were widely accepted at the time as those of the princes, but this has not been proven and is far from certain. King Charles II had the bones buried in Westminster Abbey, where they remain.
• Amy Robsart, 1560, was the first wife of Lord Robert Dudley, favourite of Queen Elizabeth I of England. She is primarily known for her death by falling down a flight of stairs, the circumstances of which have often been regarded as suspicious.
• King Charles XII of Sweden was struck in the head by a projectile and killed. The definitive circumstances around Charles's death remain unclear. Despite multiple investigations of the battlefield, Charles's skull and his clothes, it is not known where and when he was hit, or whether the shot came from the ranks of the enemy or from his own men.
• Cornelia Zangheri Bandi was an Italian noblewoman whose death on 15 March 1731 may have been a possible case of spontaneous human combustion. But the case has never been proven, with the true cause of death remaining unknown.
• A human skull that was found off Vanikoro in April 2003 was thought to have been that of Gaspard Duché de Vancy, who disappeared in 1788. Who it belonged to and the cause of death are unknown.
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer, died on 5 December 1791. The circumstances of his death have attracted much research and speculation, as it remains unclear whether he died from disease or poisoning. There have also been conspiracy theories.

  19th century

• Meriwether Lewis, an American explorer who helped explore territory bought during the Louisiana Purchase, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds in an inn along the Natchez Trace, a nature trail in Tennessee, in 1809. Though it was originally declared a suicide, historians debate whether it was murder or suicide due to the nature of his injuries and the lack of a thorough autopsy.
• The Female Stranger refers to an unnamed American woman who died in 1816 and was elevated to national intrigue by the mysterious headstone and romanticized tale. Accounts of the stranger increase in oddity over time and help to incite further speculation as to the identity of the person buried in the grave. The reported location of the woman's death, Room 8 at Gadsby's Tavern, is also a tourist destination, and supposedly her ghostly visage can be seen standing at the window.
• Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, a German legal scholar, died on 29 May 1833. The circumstances remain unclear – his family as well as he himself shortly before his death believed that he had been poisoned due to his protection of and research work on Kaspar Hauser, who himself died the same year under suspicious circumstances.
• The events that led to the death of German youth Kaspar Hauser remain a mystery, just like many other points regarding his life and identity. On 14 December 1833, he came home with a deep stab wound in his chest of which he died three days later. While he had claimed to have been attacked, the court of enquiry doubted this due to inconsistencies in his claims and speculated that he wounded himself in order to seek attention and revive the fading public interest in him, a theory that is also supported by some historians today.
• Thomas Simpson was a Scottish Arctic explorer, Hudson's Bay Company agent and cousin of Company Governor Sir George Simpson. His violent death in what is now the state of Minnesota allegedly by suicide after gunning down two traveling companions in the wilderness on 6 June 1840 has long been a subject of controversy and has never been solved.
• John Gregory was an English engineer who served aboard HMS Erebus during the 1845 Franklin Expedition, which sought to explore uncharted parts of the Northwest Passage. He is believed to have died some time around May 1848. Gregory's remains were identified via DNA analysis in 2021, although his exact cause of death is undetermined.
• Edgar Allan Poe American writer, editor, and literary critic, died on 7 October 1849 under circumstances that remain mysterious. The circumstances leading up to it are uncertain and the cause of death is disputed. On 3 October 1849, he was found delirious in Baltimore, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died days later.
• In the years in between 1849 and 1859, a skeleton was found on King William Island which was thought to be that of Harry Goodsir, who had disappeared in 1848. After conducting tests on the bones, it is believed that cause of death was a tooth that was infected, but this was not confirmed. Also another skeleton was found that was thought to be that of Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte, who disappeared along with Goodsir, aboard Franklin's lost expedition, but this was proven to be untrue. Whom it belonged to and cause of death are unknown. Dundas Le Vesconte's body was found, but his cause of death is unknown.
• Edward James Roye was the first of Liberia's True Whig Party, who had served as the fifth President of Liberia from 1870 until he was overthrown a year later and whose death had followed on 11 February 1872. The circumstances of Roye's death remains unknown.
• Zeng Guofan, a Chinese statesman, military general, and Confucian scholar of the late Qing dynasty. He is best known for raising and organizing the Xiang Army to aid the Qing military in suppressing the Taiping Rebellion and restoring the stability of the Qing Empire. Along with other prominent figures such as Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang of his time, Zeng set the scene for the Tongzhi Restoration, an attempt to arrest the decline of the Qing dynasty. He died on 12 March 1872 of mysterious reasons.
• L'Inconnue de la Seine was the name given to an unidentified young woman who, according to an oft-repeated story, was pulled out of the River Seine at the Quai du Louvre in Paris around the late 1880s. Since the body showed no signs of violence, suicide was suspected.
• Composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky died in Saint Petersburg in November 1893 nine days after his Sixth Symphony, called the "Pathétique", had debuted. His cause of death is debated and remains unsolved.
• Barney Barnato, an English Randlord and entrepreneur who was a prominent rival to Cecil Rhodes, was found dead at sea near Madeira, Portugal on 14 June 1897. While suicide was the prevailing theory, his family rejected it, saying that it was unlike him to do such a thing.